From example shot, it does look more like a Dynamic Range issue, than simple metering 'error'. The scene seems to contains a wide range of contrast, with the camera and foreground in shadow, the sky very white behind. As shot the in-camera metering does look to have done a half reasonable job, of metering for the foreground building, and brought the exposure 'up' to get detail in the stone-work, whilst letting the sky, 'blow' as not such an important element...
This is the perennial 'problem'.. deciding what's more 'important' shaddow details or high-light detail, and how much of either you are prepared to loose... or 'savvy' before 'settings'.
FILM... suggestion that film tends to offer a greater dynamic range than digi-sensor, is over simplified, but largely 'true'.. but even with film, in such a situation, you would have largely the same issue. It IS good fun to use though! ;-)
HDR merging in digital,is the modern suggestion to the issue of compressed dynamic range, but is as has been hintmated actually only a modern adaptation of exposure-manipulations for film / printing paper, where photographers of old would take two exposures, one for shadow detail, one for high-lights, and merge in printing to extend the exposure range across the scene, if a little localised exposure control, 'dodging and burning' wasn't enough in printing.
As to suggestions? Well... If you liked film? Use it! There are stations it may be more helpful, like this, and in them, why not?
As to metering for digital or film, though, issue will remain. Learning a bit more about the topic, and understanding the difference between incident metering and TTL or reflected metering, will be helpful, as well as recognizing the limits of Dynamic Range. but. as intro...
IF you used a hand-held 'incident' meter; you would walk over to the subject you are taking a photo of, in your case the chapel, and take a reading of the 'incident' light falling 'on' the subject AT the subject. Now that incident reading will be based on how strong the ambient light is, and will suggest exposure settings that are 'centered' for the ambient lighting measured... and dark stuff will record dark, light stuff light.. B-U-T, measuring how much light is falling 'on' the subject, not beng reflected by it, dark things will likely record very dark, light things very light, and the center can be 'off' and high-lights still blow whilst shadow still murk due to the amount of Dynamic range you may actually capture.
IF you use a 'reflected' metering system, usually 'Through-The-Lens' ie in-camera metering; now the meter is measuring not how muh light is falling 'on' the subject, but being reflected by it. Most systems are calibrated to the 18% or Kodak-Grey 'assumption' that most scenes in general average out to around 18% grey, so offer an exposure value, that assumes that is true of your scene, and puts the exposure somewhere around that 'mid-point' average. Now, the main subject is likely to exposure 'ok', but high-lights or shadow blow or merge; more often high-lights 'blow' where exposure centers are oft lifted by subjects that are duller and reflect less than 18% of light falling on them.
Of old, TTL metering systems wer most often what is known as 'Center-Weighted-Average' or CWA... this is where we depart into the realms of different metering schemes.... but, simplified a bit, a CWA syste, took two meter-readings, one for the whole scene, and one for the central, usually third of it in the middle, then it averaged the readings, giving the offered exposure value a 'weighting' so the offered average was closer to the exposure value measured for the center, but shifted up or down a bit depending on the measured EV for the wider back-ground.
This is a little more refined, than merely taking a single EV for the whole scene, whether incident or reflected... A-N-D worth noting, being more 'refined' doesn't make it any more 'curate'.. distilling a fine wine, to rough brandy doesn't necessarily make it taste better!
Moving on, though, we get to more involved metering methods, and to Keep-It-Simple-Silly, for now, lets talk 'spot' metering.... now you take a 'reflected' meter reading from a very small portion of the scene, aybe only 1% or so of overall image area... and this tells you bog all! If you used exposure settigs based on a simple single spot reading, they would suggest an EV for that value as 'center' of your dynamic range.. and if what you have spotted is a shaddow or a high-light, that will be whey off, and you will probably be even more or less over or under-exposed... hence you need to start applying a bit more savvy to the job.
Two common ways of using simple 'single' narrow field spot metering are to either;
a) do what would now be called 'shoot-to-the-left', and make a spot-reading from a high-light, then pull the exposure back down from that by so many 'stops', probably three for widgetal four or maybe five for film, to 'center' the exposure on something well within the dynamic range of the sensor/film, without the high-lights blowing out the end.. essence of the modern Shoot-to-the-Left, using the histogram and pulling the right hand 'high-lights' end of the histogram to the left and into the main region of the cameras Dynamic Range.. letting shadows merge, and the main subject go a bit bright or dark depending, but, hopefully 'mostly' keeping high-light detail.
b) Making a pseudo icident reading, with a reflected meter. Where you dont have an incident meter, just TTL or the 'subject' is impractical to get to and meter light falling on it; you meter from the shooting vantage TTL, and pick a mid-tone aprox 18% grey; grass and concrete is close, or if practical get the subject to hold up an 18% grey-card! Take a reflected 'spot' reading off that, and use that as the center point for your exposure settings.
Situation dependent both methods of metering are valid, and can work reasonably well. A-N-D.. I will say that using the 'principle' I have used a zoom-lens on a camera with CWA-TTL meter to make 'pretend' narrow angle 'spot' meter readings, before swapping back to a more moderate angle lens and using those pseudo-spot readings to base my exposure settings on.... which leads to the topic of 'Mult-Spot' or 'Matrix' metering....
Now, rather than relyng on just 'one' spot meter reading, and guessing where that aught to center.. you take two or more, and 'average' them. If you take three, one for high-lights, one for shadows and one for mid-tones, you can assess the range of scene contrast as well as the average brightness, and you can 'weight' the average to favour the high-lights, or the shadows or the mid-tones; either mathematically, or by taking more high-light, shadow or mid-tone readings to chuck into the sum... However... hint is that first we are doing more than 'just' measuring either 'overall' incident or reflected light levels; we are measuring the 'range' of tones, the dynamic range between high-light and shadow.. deciding which is more or less important to us, and by 'some' method deciding on an 'average' exposure value to use somewhere between.
Modern Digital cameras are computers, and they tend to be pretty good at doing 'sums'.. so modern 'evaluatve' or 'matrix' metering systems are basically much more complicated and refined multi-spot metering schemes... remember cheap brandy and fine wine.. being more refined doesn't necessarily mean more accurate even less 'better'... B-U-T... a modern digi-sensor is essentially perhaps twenty-million light-meters.. each measuring a TINY portion of the light intensity being reflected by the scene.... there isn't actually parity twixt receptors and pixels, but lets ignore that to consider the principle as if there was.....
Your digital camera isn't, like film, actually recording an image, it is simply recordng those 20million light meter readings.... computer than stores them, and when you want to look at a 'picture' uses them to decde how bright or dim, and how red/green/blue to paint each pixel. B-U-T at point of capture, its like being able to take 20million very very tiny 'spot' meter readings instantaneously.. computer can look at them values, and assess both the 'contrast range' and how many are brighter, or dimmer, and more where approximately they are in the scene.. and use a very very complicated mathematical scheme to derive a 'average' from them... and do so in an instant... Hence modern matrix of evaluative metering systems, these days can be very very smart, and very very clever at coming up with exposure settings... and, usually do it far better and far quicker than we can, and return 'something' we are usually pretty happy with.... but remember the fine wine and cheap brandy!
The camera, for all its complexity, is still only a computer, it may be able to make millions of meter readings and gazzillions of sums based on the values, in an instant... B-U-T... its still only a pocket calculator with a big ego.. it may know numbers very well indeed, but it doesn't have a clue what its looking at... YOU DO!
And coming back around... moving beyond just turning the camera on and trusting whatever metering sceme it employs, you need to apreciate the limitations of the dynamic range the film or sensor can record, and apreciate that whatever metering method you employ, 'all' you (or computer!) are ever doing is trying to find exposure settings for 'some' mid-piont twist high-lights and shaddows... that may get the tonal range you see between the end stops of available Dynamic Range, or may not, and may or may not, put your mid-point slap in between them... but decssions and compromises have to be made, by YOU... computers only do sums! And more sums do not always better decissions make!
As shown, your chapel looks a 'little' on the \bright side, to what I would expect to 'perceive' on the spot, which would be the building a little, if not actually quite a lot dimmer.. but that's a matter of preference as anything... there's an obvious hot spot the stone-work, the sky has blown, and there seem to be some buildings in brighter light behind blowing into that.. which personally I don't find detracting; that exposure fade, has a similar effect to selective focus fade using wider apertures.. is this a 'problem'? Do you 'like' the picture as shot?
PERSONALLY; and entering the world of critique, to me the subject is a little boring; it's telling me little. The building and stones are all 'wonky' without being obviousely chaotic, neither building nor headstones look like they aught be falling down, and the perspective doesn't make them look like they are, it just looks 'wonky'.. the brighter exposure, is rather 'flat' and doesn't convey any dark sinsister church-yard 'mood', the overhanging Yew(?) tree? What's going on there; it's not making or completing any 'natural framing' it's just hanging across the top, adding to the 'clutter' without adding or enhancing deliberate 'chaos' of ramshackle chapel, or mood or church-yard, of or... its just a bit more clutter... which is to say that of anything and everything I.. and again, this is the personal... of everything or anything I may appreciate in that picture... the exposure is probably one of the last things I would take issue with.... Composition-Composition-Composition!
If I was tackling that scene... first I would have to say I probably wouldn't... but if I did, I would probably have a somewhat clearer intent of what I hoped to get. As a situational shot of the building, I would probably have tried to pull back, pull left of frame and make the building the obvious 'subject' and condense the clutter excluding the tee and a lot of head-stones, or find some elements to make a more conclusive natural 'frame', I would probably also have tried to get the parallels as straight as possible, and not shot so low or wide, and tried to back up and shoot it 'straighter' probably with a slightly longer lens, if I could get it all in. Alternately, shooting for 'gothic mood', I would probably have waited till dust/dark and gone 'low-key' letting the exposure drop to make it dark and moody, and loose detail into the abstract; I would probably have opened up and shot for a shallow Depth of Field, to render even more of the scene indistinct, and likely the chapel itself in that, closing in on individual head-stones or 'something' to decrease the 'detail even further, and increase the amount of 'ambiguity' forcing viewers to infer what they were looking at, rather than trying to serve it up for them so obviously... whether you or any-one else would 'like' my take on the scene is utterly subjective.. but long before composition co,es question of conception....
And that is the point here... so much is to be found looking THROUGH the camera, not AT the camera, and making pictures not settings is what's important... ultimately, what counts is the result, and whether YOU like what you got, and whether that was what you intended to get! And the two need not be co-incident!
The 'exposure' is only one very small ingredient of the result, and utterly subjective, even more subjective what might be the best method of 'metering', where EVEN if you get as sophisticated as utilisng ultra refined, ultra complicated spot-metering schemes, at the end of the day, ALL you are ever going to achieve is an image that is more or less bright or dim or more or less what you hoped for, and whether you get that by a bit of educated guess-work and metering by eye to the F-16-sunny guideline, or with a fancy Sekonic studio meter, twenty thousand spot-meter readings, and a spread-sheet, matters little.... end of the day you are trying to find ONE single exposure value that gives you something YOU are pleased with.. and all still so much is in the conception and the composition, NOT in the knobs, buttons and twidly bits!
And as suggested, if not pleased with what you have achieved there.. which for all critique offered is still down to whether you like it or not... looking for alternatives or improvements,, place to start is at the start, with the conception, and composition, and the compromises YOU decide to make, NOT in the metering methods or settings, and for that shot... ultimately contrast range suggest it was a trickier subject, so, do you want a straight 'record' shot, or something to evoke mood and feel, and back up to the conception, and depending, on that... rather than picking alternate metering schemes or alternate settings... picking a different time of day, a different subject angle, or even a different subject.. as said... look through the camera, not at the camera... or accept the compromise that as 'shot' you gt what you got, and it's good enough.... End of the day, the 'art' is the choices and choosing the EV to take or settings to make is but TINY fraction of the decisions that need be made... so much of photography is infront of the camera, not in it..
As shot, I really doubt that I could have got much 'better' exposure than the one you have, under the circumstances shot was take, regardless of the metering method or exposure settings, just a different compromise... so of the many many compromises, what's the best one to shift or change to better achieve what you conceived before you started?
